A New Kind of First Lady for China

“Chinese people can finally face up to their reflection in the mirror,” a fashion designer said recently of the Chinese First Lady Peng Liyuan, on whose trim figure his creations had just been immortalized. Two weeks ago, Peng, a popular singer whose star had long shone brighter than that of her husband, the newly anointed President Xi Jinping, stepped out for the first time beside him. They were in Russia, a place with which China has a historically fraught relationship, but diplomacy held little interest for observers—not when the brand of Peng’s belted overcoat had yet to be identified. Could it be? The First Lady stepping out before the world in clothes made in China?

Already, Peng has distinguished herself from her immediate predecessors—the older, frailer, and considerably less telegenic wives of the former leaders Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, who kept clear of the limelight. But until this month, it seemed as if she might follow their example: in 2007, when Xi was made a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and put on track for the top job, she essentially put her career on hold, and retreated, for the most part, from the public eye.

The Chinese are reflexively suspicious of politically ambitious wives; memories of Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife and co-conspirator in the Cultural Revolution, and the Empress Dowager, during whose reign the Qing dynasty heard its final death knell, have proven hard to shake. But now there is longing, as well, for a Chinese Michelle or Diana or Jackie—a First Lady whose dynamism and beauty can somehow symbolize the rising superpower.

The calcified system that Peng’s husband now runs is in desperate need of the kind of injection of charisma she can provide, both at home and abroad. While foreign media has continued to report the corruption, cronyism, and catastrophic pollution that plague the country, Chinese citizens vocalize their plight, packaged in sardonic humor, to better evade the Internet censors: “How lucky we are to live in the new China; Beijingers get to enjoy secondhand smoke for air, and Shanghainese savor piglet soup from their tap!” is the running joke on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter.

Peng’s personal history alone should offer inspiration to ordinary people. In contrast to her husband, the son of a revolutionary hero, Peng was born to a humble family of limited resources (by her own account, Peng did not see a camera until well into her teen-age years). At eighteen, she joined the art troupe of the People’s Liberation Army and went on to earn a master’s degree from the Chinese Conservatory of Music. Peng’s good looks certainly did not hurt her career, which reached its apex when she became indispensable to China’s most watched TV extravaganza, a four-hour Spring Festival variety show, but she helped herself by avoiding mistakes and controversy, keeping a low, clean profile that earned her positive press as both a star and a politician’s wife; attracting little gossip; obtaining the rank of a major general; and marrying an unknown politician whose meteoric rise she could have scarcely anticipated.

The charmed arc of Peng’s life naturally invites speculation about its next chapter, which may well be the bit over which she will wield the least control. Aside from fashion decisions—and conservative ones, at that—it is unclear what meaningful things Peng might do while her husband is in office. Despite an appointment as a World Health Organization Goodwill Ambassador in 2011, Peng has—either by choice or Party decree—announced no campaigns or projects of her own. This is not to say that she has no influence; the stock prices of the domestic brands she has blessed with her patronage have proven that’s not true. Rather, it establishes her allegiance. What the First Lady dons on her body, no matter how well-fitting, will always represent the agenda of the state.

That allegiance to the state will make it more difficult for her to take on the softer, humanizing role some people would like to see her play. She has a history that will be hard to shake. In 1989, in the days following the Tiananmen massacre, Peng—who is, after all, a P.L.A. general—donned her uniform to perform in Tiananmen Square before a sea of rifle-bearing troops. (A photo of the performance, which circulated rapidly online after its recent discovery, was just as swiftly scrubbed.) In 2007, Peng performed in the flowing skirt and headdress of a traditional Tibetan songstress, crooning about liberation by the P.L.A. and the “saving star of the Communist Party.”

Of course, Peng is a performer by trade, and her success is owed, in large part, to her ability to inhabit any role, convincingly, on stage. In becoming China’s First Lady, she has taken on a new one, and so far she has largely been successful. In the days since photos of Peng disembarking in Moscow first surfaced, she has become the national conversation piece—to the point where even the most mundane of her cyber fan clubs have begun to suffer censorship. Of the material that has not been censored, my favorite exchange came from the comment section of a prominent microblogger who goes by the handle of Pretending to be in New York. “Personally speaking, I like her,” he wrote. “I just feel that enough praises are enough. It’s never too late to praise someone after they have achieved something.” To which someone using the handle Straightforward Person replied: “To be honest, what I feel toward [Peng] is more sympathy than anything else. The outside world has these unrealistic and outsized expectations. While the Chinese princelings continue to profit off their illicit connections and greedy politicians make a living by perpetuating corruption, the ‘First Lady’ carries on her shoulders the responsibility of remaking China’s image. Inevitably, she will be crushed.”

Peng Liyuan, the wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping, is welcomed by officials upon arrival in Pretoria. Photo by Stringer/AFP/Getty.